


Keeping Things Whole

by prettyasadiagram



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/pseuds/prettyasadiagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He asked once, why, if she told him every day to remember that he was more than the wolf, more than the man, then why live by the rules of the wolf.</p><p>She just smiled and ruffled his hair and said, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”</p><p>Well, Derek is older now, and he still doesn’t understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Things Whole

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [General Wolf Rules For Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/593384) by [thatdamneddame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/pseuds/thatdamneddame). 



> Based off [this](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mea3ea6hB51qayg1oo1_500.jpg) poem by Clarissa Pinkola Estes that appeared on tumblr in the recent past. 
> 
> As for you, thatdamneddame--don't worry, we can write this off as separation anxiety

General Wolf Rules for Life

> 1\. Eat  
>  2\. Rest  
>  3\. Rove in between  
>  4\. Render loyalty  
>  5\. Love the children  
>  6\. Cavil in the moonlight  
>  7\. Tune your ears  
>  8\. Attend to the bones  
>  9\. Make love  
>  10\. Howl often  
> 

When Derek was growing up, there was a list tacked to the fridge. It was old and yellowed and tattered and smelled like pack, and his mother touched it like a talisman every time she left the house.

He asked once, why, if she told him every day to remember that he was more than the wolf, more than the man, then why live by the rules of the wolf.

She just smiled and ruffled his hair and said, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Well, Derek is older now, and he still doesn’t understand.

 

**1\. Eat**

The pack wakes sore and grumpy the morning after the full moon. Derek remembers that feeling, when he thought his skin couldn’t contain the leftover energy, the remnants of the wolf, so he bundles them into the Camaro, jaw clenching as Erica snaps her teeth at Boyd, but the moment they stumble out of the car and into the diner’s parking lot, they calm. 

Derek has been coming to this diner after full moons for years. He remembers his first shift, the pain in his joints and the banked desire to run and run and run. He remembers the simple comfort of family, of bacon and pancakes and the squeak of vinyl seats as his younger siblings fought over the last sip of cold coffee.

Boyd smothers his pancakes in syrup and Erica douses her hash browns in ketchup and Isaac sips at his coffee like it’s his last, and it’s not the same, but Derek feels something in him settle.

When Stiles and Scott walk in, Derek is ready to fall back into the role Scott has carved out for him, the bad guy, the harbinger, but Stiles smiles and Scott shrugs and when they head over, it feels like things are knitting back together.

 

**2\. Rest**

Derek wakes and for once feels rested. There are no threats in town, no hunters to avoid, and the novelty of it all keeps Derek in bed another hour, just lying in sun-warmed sheets wondering what he wants for lunch.

 

**3\. Rove in between**

He takes the pack running and calls it a training exercise. They run the length of the territory, but he shows them where he used to hide from Laura, where he used to swim in the summer, where his favorite trails ended. 

They run past the clearing where he ran after the fire, where he knelt and cried and howled, but he doesn’t stop and they don’t ask, even though the grass is lush and the sun is bright on the trees and their muscles ache.

When Isaac tackles Boyd and darts off, laughing, Derek smiles and falls back, watches Erica race after Isaac as Boyd leap over the both of them.

 

**4\. Render loyalty**

Stiles comes by once, twice, and then he’s there more often than not. He’s there with Erica, studying for a History test; showing up and playing video games with Boyd; coming by and cooking with Isaac in the under stocked kitchen. 

Derek doesn’t understand, bides his time and listens in, wonders if there’s something to watch out for in the way that Stiles is always in the thick of things. It’s not until he’s crouched over Stiles, growling in the face of hunters, that he realizes that he knows nothing of loyalty, not anymore, but maybe Stiles can teach him. 

 

**5\. Love the children**

After Peter and after Gerard, when things are quiet, Derek looks at his house and thinks about his pack and there is a moment when he thinks of leaving. He thinks of pulling out the duffel from the closet and filling it with his meager possessions and getting the hell out of this town that is slowly filling with poison. 

Derek remembers his life before the fire, when there was laughter and love and noise that filled these halls, and he remembers his life in New York, where there was Laura and silence and a bone deep knowledge that the other was all they had left.

But now he has Erica and Isaac and Boyd, and frustratingly Stiles, and sometimes Scott, and questionably Jackson, and he finds himself hesitating to leave them behind. He feels responsible, but more than that, they are his. 

He understands now why things changed between him and Laura, after the fire. He understands now the look on his mother’s face, when she stood beside his father and watched over the pack, watched over her children. 

 

**6\. Cavil in the moonlight**

The moon is many things to Derek. A reminder, a warning, a pull. He doesn’t know what she is to his betas yet, just knows that under her call they shift and change and eye each other sometimes with love and sometimes with spite. He watches as they test the limits of these new forms, watches as they find a way to fit alongside each other.

He remembers being like that, testing the boundaries and fighting under the cold light of the moon, waking up in a pile of limbs and family and warmth. He thinks that one day, not yet, he might have that again.

 

**7\. Tune your ears**

Sometimes Derek wakes and the house is quiet, and he smells rot and smoke and ash, and he scrambles outside until he can breathe again. 

Those mornings the quiet is more than he can bear and he calls up the exercises his father patiently taught him. Find your mother, find your sister, find your uncle—only now it’s finding his betas, finding Scott, finding Stiles. 

Standing in the forest by the school, he listens to his betas roaming the halls; to Scott talking to Danny; to Stiles talking back in class, his heart beating in time with the tapping of his pencil, and then his laugh rings out and Derek’s breathe catches.

He thinks that if he had to, he could find Stiles anywhere.

 

**8\. Attend to the bones**

There’s a plot for his family in the cemetery, with tombstones but no bodies, markers with no meaning. When he mourns his family, he goes to the woods and runs, pretends that they’re hiding behind trees and tracking his prints, that he is not alone.

His grandfather died when Derek was little, and he watched his mother cry and build a wolfsbane rope as she explained the history, the purpose. Now, he visits Laura once a month and kneels at her grave, remembers burying her the first time, wrapping wolfsbane around a rope and coiling it around her body, above her grave, giving her peace and setting her free.

Sometimes he runs into Stiles, coming or going, catches the redness of his eyes, the tightness of his lips, and he doesn’t say anything and neither does Stiles. 

 

**9\. Make love**

There are words for this thing he has with Stiles, but Derek doesn’t say them. He doesn’t say, _I think I love you_ or _do you want to stay the night_ , but he asks with seeking hands and bruising lips. He asks with bacon in the morning and French fries on the weekend. 

Sometimes he thinks Stiles doesn’t get it, that Stiles needs the words more than he needs Derek, and Derek wishes he could explain that Stiles feels like black earth and sun-warmed grass, that he feels like a promise, a bridge between past and future. 

But then Stiles hangs back after pack meetings, smiles around the rim of a coffee mug, tucks his body against Derek’s and doesn’t ask for more than Derek can give, and Derek still wants to give him everything.

 

**10\. Howl often**

Derek hears Stiles singing in the kitchen, “I knew you were trouble when you walked innnnn—” and for some reason he thinks about the list his mom kept on the fridge, the rules he read every morning while he ate his cereal. He thinks he gets it now, that the wolf’s rules were also the man’s, that they were not separate, just _more_. 

He thinks about his dad, sitting on the porch, beer in hand saying, we howl our pains and our joys, our loves and our sorrows, because we need more than words sometimes.

Later, when Derek runs off after his betas, leaving Stiles behind, he thinks about that, and he howls, long and clear, and hopes that Stiles understands.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not repost this work in its entirety or share this work on third-party websites such as Goodreads.


End file.
